Wireless communication networks provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, and broadcasts. Such networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology. The UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). The UMTS supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides greater data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks. Other example networks include GPRS/EDGE, CDMA/DO, or EUTRAN (4G LTE). Such wireless communication networks may follow standards implemented by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) or the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), for example.
Contemporary wireless devices frequently include a subscriber identity module (SIM) card to facilitate communication with a communication network via a subscription for the designated voice or data subscription of the wireless device. When a SIM card is initialized (e.g., at boot-up after powering on or after a SIM card is inserted into the wireless device), the wireless device reads the content of several files stored on the SIM card. For example, during the initialization process various features stored on the SIM card, such as an address book, text messages, network names, or other carrier or subscriber information, are read and made available to the wireless device. Consequently, the initialization process may take a significant amount of time depending on the number of files on the SIM card, the size of the files on the SIM card, or the number of records of the files on the SIM card. For example, each file on the SIM card may contain up to 255 records. Thus, if it takes an average of 20 ms to read each record, the initialization process may take over 5 seconds to read that a single file on the SIM card. Consequently, a user of the wireless device may be prevented from accessing services on the wireless device until after the related files have been read from the SIM card during the initialization process. Thus, the user may have to wait an undesirable amount of time after powering on the wireless device or after inserting a SIM card before desired features (e.g., Internet connectivity, outbound/inbound calling, inbound/outbound messaging) become available.